Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Self-Sufficiency and Preparedness
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 07-03-2014, 06:30 AM
 
Location: Forests of Maine
37,328 posts, read 61,146,748 times
Reputation: 30256

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by bluecarebear View Post
Another observation - many of the farmer's markets are decreasing in size or closing up.
Is it possibly that what you are seeing is a regional effect?

In this area new farms start-up every year, and new Farmer's Markets open every year. Here organic and sustainable farming is booming.



Quote:
Originally Posted by LordyLordy View Post
... The problem with the "farmers" today is mostly that they are not green. They are mechanized, burn through fossil fuels at an alarming rate, owe a ton of money to the banks, are largely monocroppers (all eggs in one basket) and they all douse their products in nasty chemicals galore. They are basically indentured servants caught between Monsanto, John Deere and the bank.

That's VERY different from the small 5-10 acre organic farm that composts, grows varieties of veggies and fruits, has bees, is into solar or wind energy, runs their old diesel truck on vegetable oil and lives in the small straw-bale house. 99% of your rural "farmers" do none of those.
These are two totally different farm models.

I grew-up on a conventional farm, but now I am on the organic side.

It is very important for farm produce customers to do farm-tours to see what the farm looks like and what methods are being used.

At the Farmer's Markets I attend, all farmers encourage our customers to come to the farms, to see how the crops are grown and to pet the livestock.



Quote:
... My 5+ acre "farm" is all organic, I compost and spread the manure from our two horses around, built almost everything ourselves, fencing, home stuff, solar, so on and so on. This year my organically grown tomatoes and peppers had a bumper crop - I have been feeding most of my neighbors who have more land than me with these tomatoes. Just finished a hoop and in it my first zucchini is coming in, so is chard. I have some watermelons and the okra looks like it will have a bumper crop too.

I am on my way up - next project is to deer-fence the property so I can grow anything, anywhere (we initially put in basic fencing around the whole property but that is not enough for the deer so I grow in small plots that are fenced themselves for now but that's getting old ). Mind you, about 2 acres of our 5.2 acres we fenced and cross-fenced for our two manure producers - the horses. By the time I am done with the 3 acres, I will be making enough food to feed at least 3 families in season. Oh yeah, I also keep bees.

I just convinced my neighbor to sell me an acre at below-market price. That acre will be farmed too - I will probably plant olive trees on it. The next acre I buy from the same neighbor will be planted in grapes. So on and so on. One acre at a time....
What you describe is the primary method of 'farming' that I see in this region.



Quote:
... I will take my ****ty 5 acres with food I make on them. I would encourage everyone else to think about all this and make up their own minds. Going back to the land is the ONLY choice, in my humble opinion.
I agree.

Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 07-03-2014, 06:38 AM
 
Location: Forests of Maine
37,328 posts, read 61,146,748 times
Reputation: 30256
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brynach View Post
If and when I visit a prepping website, the main activity seems to come from the extremists. The Survivalist forum basically poo poos the idea of 72 hour preparedness. Well, for them, I suppose it seems silly, but I don't think it's a mistake to have enough for 72 hours. Mostly they point to most recent disasters being more than 72 hours in need. But that's the giant catastrophes. I'm sure that they are not posting any success stories for 72 hours. I think that's about what I have myself. Pretty basic.
A 72hour storm is not outside of the ordinary in winter.

A 72hour power-outage is not unusual at anytime. We usually lose power here 2 to 4 times every month, some are for only an hour, others are for a week. I just saw in our paper where 1500 local homes have been without power for the past 2 weeks.

These are not unusual events, nor catastrophes. Just normal rural living.

Prep for whatever is the usual type of problems that your area has.



Personally, we stock food from harvest-to-harvest. Each thing is harvested in it's season. Maple sap only flows once/year, so I need enough maple to last me a year. From harvest-to-harvest. The surplus gets sold at market.

I get fiddleheads once/year. I need enough stocked to last my family from this harvest until next harvest. The surplus goes to market.

Honey is the same. Every crop is the same.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 07-03-2014, 08:21 AM
 
Location: Cody, WY
10,420 posts, read 14,558,929 times
Reputation: 22017
Quote:
Originally Posted by cattusbabe View Post
I am kind of new to prepping. Losing power for several days over the winter will make you get religion fast. I have learned a lot from reading various sites and YouTube. I have noticed that most of what I am seeing out there is circa 2010 to 12 and then things fall off. Whats up?
Has everyone said all that they have to say or is it something else?
This forum is moribund because we've lost most of our productive posters, but other internet survivalist fora are busy. There are thousands of worthwhile videos on youtube; there are plenty of new books to discover.

I think that one big problem we have here is that common S-S & P topics are scattered around so many places on this message board that have little to do with survivalism. Some examples are food, vehicles, gardening, investing, home businesses, guns, rural living, and more. Although I'm not retired I am old so I've started threads on the Retirement forum regarding guns, disaster preparedness, and survival kits. People there are interested; moderation is sympathetic like this forum. There's a very lively thread on hurricanes right now that would be very appropriate here.

I believe that a subforum here on knives and other weapons would get us some new blood. There are entire message boards dealing with primitive weapons. There are knife threads on the cooking and gardening fora all of the time. If a few of us started threads on various types of knives and kept at it people would start to think of this forum as the place to talk knives whether for fileting or scalping. We might also consider a subforum simply titled ''Survival Weapons''.

We need to avoid politics as well; this message board has several places for it. It's usually employed here simply to disrupt threads. Our arguments here should be about useful items and techniques for using them. Survival and self-sufficiency cover almost everything.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Self-Sufficiency and Preparedness
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top